Discovering my true self

I know that they say age is just a number and yes it’s true age is just a number but I also feel that in some cases it factors in. Take myself for example, I’m 24 (soon to be 25) when I started this journey a couple months ago I was like I have no age limits I’m good what whomever. Well, this isn’t true now as I’ve found out. I have a preference for men who are older than me by at least a year and who are at max 10-12 years older than me. I realized this when I was having a conversation with a very nice Dom. We were talking and having a great time getting to know one another then all of a sudden he mentions something about grandchildren or something and I’m oh that’s awesome by the way how old are you? (as I had told him in one of the initial conversations and he didn’t tell me and I was purely curious) he told me he was 62. Now during our conversation we flirted pretty hard back and forth which is fine but as soon as he told me his age I started have a panic attack. I didn’t realize at the time that having a sexual conversation with an older man would cause my PTSD to flare up. I explained the situation to the guy and he was very sweet and apologetic about it and I felt so bad but I couldn’t do it anymore so we stopped talking. But, it kills me that people still get mad and tell me that age is just a number when I tell them that yes we can talk but it will only me vanilla conversation and that’s all I can offer. It kills me when they contact me first (clearly without reading my profile) asking for dirty pictures or with flirty messages and I respond back saying thanks but no thanks as I have issues. And it is completely uncalled for for them to tell me that I’m a tease or rude because I told them sorry I can’t talk with you in a flirty manner. Yes, some men are nice about it and apologetic but I clearly state on my profile I cannot have flirty conversations with men over 40 as I have PTSD. (This has been my rant of the day. Thanks for “listening”)